MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS/. The Kremlin will not comment on the political activity of former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
"I am not commenting on this," Peskov said.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and head of now defunct oil company Yukos, spent ten years in jail on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin in December 2013.
Media reports said the ex-Yukos head wrote in his pardon request that he pledged not to go into politics. President Putin said in late December 2014 Khodorkovsky still had the right to be engaged in politics.
Putin said when he decided to pardon Khodorkovsky, he did not take into consideration what he could do or not to do. "I took the decision for humanitarian reasons. He wrote that his mother was seriously ill," he said.
"It [political activity] is his choice, and he has the right to do it, as any other Russian citizen, if he fits, including for being elected to high positions in the country." "God bless him. Let him work," the president said.